I know how tempting it is to take these files and emails and try to make a blanket condemnation of all the science that has been done on climate change. And there is no doubt that these specific scientists have a lot to explain with regard to some of their language used in the emails and apparent participation in at least some withholding of data that would contradict their findings.

But examining these revelations from a macro perspective would convince most reasonable skeptics that, while the case against AGW may be growing, the problem of climate change cannot be swept under the rug so easily.

I hate to disabuse some of the more excitable conspiracy theorists out there of their total AGW debunking dreams, but the climate is indeed, changing. It has been changing for 20,000 years and will continue to change. Sometimes,the change can be measured in decades, sometimes centuries, sometimes millenia. The question should be not whether the entire climate change community of thousands of scientists and hundreds of research labs is trying to put one over on us but whether there is anything we can or should be doing to deal with the problem.

It is unfortunate that so many non-scientists have latched on to AGW to promote their own political and economic agendas. I suggest that this is where the fight must be directed; governments, corporations, NGO’s, and the Al Gores of the world who stand to profit enormously from the ruinous policies they promote.

There appear to be many leading advocates for the AGW theory involved in this email controversy. But positing a “global conspiracy” is a stretch. The reason is that the AGW scientific community is just too diverse, too spread out over too many scientific disciplines for such a conspiracy to take root. To believe in such a conspiracy is to posit the idea that thousands of scientists are frauds - a laughable notion that is belied by solid evidence of warming in hundreds of observations and experiments around the world, published in peer reviewed journals for the express purpose of confirming - or denying - these conclusions.

And even some of the language in these emails that has been leapt upon by skeptics may, indeed, be misunderstood:

Dr. Mann, a professor at Pennsylvania State University, confirmed in an interview that the e-mail message was real. He said the choice of words by his colleague was poor but noted that scientists often used the word “trick” to refer to a good way to solve a problem, “and not something secret.”

At issue were sets of data, both employed in two studies. One data set showed long-term temperature effects on tree rings; the other, thermometer readings for the past 100 years.

Through the last century, tree rings and thermometers show a consistent rise in temperature until 1960, when some tree rings, for unknown reasons, no longer show that rise, while the thermometers continue to do so until the present.

Dr. Mann explained that the reliability of the tree-ring data was called into question, so they were no longer used to track temperature fluctuations. But he said dropping the use of the tree rings was never something that was hidden, and had been in the scientific literature for more than a decade. “It sounds incriminating, but when you look at what you’re talking about, there’s nothing there,” Dr. Mann said.

In addition, other independent but indirect measurements of temperature fluctuations in the studies broadly agreed with the thermometer data showing rising temperatures.

Believable? I would say at this point that the burden of proof is on Mann and his colleagues but that some of that explanation sounds reasonable.

Not surprisingly, the Keith mentioned is none other than CRU’s own Keith Briffa, another Hockey-Team leader, whose temperature graphs, derived from tree ring data from Yamal, Russia, were cited by the IPCC as supporting evidence of MBH’s assertion of unprecedented 20th-century warming. But as we reported at the time, that buttress crumbled last month when Briffa’s results were proven to stand no more reliably than Mann’s.

Ultimately, neither reconstruction attained its alarmist imperative goal of proving today’s global temperatures unprecedented. Despite repeated fraudulent efforts to demonstrate otherwise, 20th-century highs remain documented as several degrees cooler than those of the Medieval Warming Period of 900-1300 AD. Bad news for the mankind-stinks crowd in general; worse news for those actually involved in this devious deception.

Both Mann and Briffa had been challenged for years to produce their data, methods, and source code by Climate Audit’s Steve McIntyre. Both ignored the tenets of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) McIntyre cited and fought every effort to induce their coming clean. And actually not without good reason — last month, CRU was effectively forced to release the Yamal information, whereupon an analysis by McIntyre proved that Briffa et al. had cherry-picked and manipulated data, intentionally omitting records not friendly to their position.

The journal in which Mann and Briffa’s data was published failed to demand that the pair release the details of their studies on which the “hockey stick” graph was based, which flew in the face of their own policy! For his part, McIntyre has done a great service to science and the public with his single minded pursuit of the facts. (This WSJ article on McIntyre goes into detail about his quest.)

But does debunking the hockey stick graph debunk global warming as a theory? Not hardly. What makes AGW such a problematic theory is that the evidence is so contradictory, depending on which scientific discipline you choose to study. That, and the almost surreal opposition by AGW advocates in the scientific community to contrary findings. I say surreal because the scientific method does not allow for such rock solid certainty for a theory where the facts are still being gathered and analyzed. The atmosphere is such a monumentally complex system - the AGW theory itself is incredibly diversified to include the oceans, volcanoes, weathering of the mountains, meteorology, chemistry - all of this information plugged into models that so far, have been wildly inaccurate.

This in and of itself does not debunk global warming. As I’ve written previously, models that do not reflect reality are instructive for scientists in that it forces them to go back to the drawing board in order to improve their modeling. Trial and error is part of the scientific method - as long as it is done honestly and without cooking the books to achieve a desired result.

And yet, despite the uncertainty, the contradictory findings, and the almost religious fervor among both scientists and laymen who warn of catastrophe, we are being asked to ship trillions of dollars to other countries, allow the UN sovereignty-destroying power over our economy, and severely restrict industrial activity.

What’s wrong with that picture?

Even without this controversy, there were plenty of unanswered questions about AGW - enough to prevent non-scientists from hijacking the debate in order to achieve power, influence, and riches at the expense of healthy economies. At the very least, I hope that these revelations lead to slowdown in the rush to apply solutions that won’t address the problem as much as they cater to the desires of some powerful people.

I believe there is a case to be made to lower our emissions. This is common sense where uncertainty about AGW is prevelant. There is also an excellent case to be made to find alternative forms of energy to oil. Neither of these goals should be abandoned. But the draconian measures being proposed need to be deep sixed and climate change scientists need to abandon their opposition to skeptical viewpoints and get back to the business of discovering facts untainted by the desire for a specific outcome.

If that will be the lesson we take away from these troubling revelations, the world will be better for it.

I agree with most of this post — except why do you feel it necessary to spend several paragraphs pointing out that the emails don’t prove some global conspiracy? That’s a lot like the talking points going around to the effect that what’s important about the emails is that they don’t demonstrate a massive Soros-funded conspiracy of vegetarian nuts, etc. That’s a huge straw man.

Isn’t it enough of a scandal if the emails pointed to a conspiracy among the guys emailing each other to suppress inconvenient data, discredit other scientists, muse about undercutting the reputation of a peer-reviewed journal, and manipulating reporters? I should think that confirming such conduct should be enough to get them drummed out of their academic posts. It won;’t, of course, and that’s the core of the problem. It’s not a conspiracy but as you got to in the rest of your post, it’s group think. Dangerous group think because of the trillions of dollars that might be spent on public policies driven by faulty science.

There are a lot of laymen out there spouting today about the end of the global warming debate. That’s nonsense. Others are writing about a world wide conspiracy. That also is nonsense.

I think (almost) everyone agrees that climate is changing as it has over Earth’s history. How much impact more than 6 billion people have is notoriously difficult to determine. However, to dismiss the possibility of a big impact by humans up front is just politics not science.
That said, science is also business as people compete for grants, resources, recognition. Some don’t behave honorably as some do in any other field. However, this is not a conspiracy it’s just human nature.

4

LaFong Said:
1:21 pm

A while back, Rick Moran was tagging skeptics with the “denier” label–equating skepticism with holocaust denial. This lame post by Moran trying to minimize the impact of these e-mails by supposedly serious scientists indicates who is truly in denial.

First of all, you are a bald faced liar. I challenge you to produce any evidence in more than 3000 posts where I have ever compared anyone or any group to the holocaust. You can’t because there is nothing there. In fact, the word “Holocaust” does not appear in either article you cite which proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are a liar - and an inept and bad one at that.

Secondly, the reason I am trying to minimize these emails is because idiots like you are going off half cocked and declaring the end of the global warming debate or that the emails prove a worldwide conspiracy. That’s silly - little girl silly. Since you seem to have the intellectual maturity of a 5 year old, it fits.

If you are going to lie about me, at least make it convincing. But I suppose when someone is too busy wiping the drool off the side of their mouths, I shouldn’t expect too much.

ed.

5

LaFong Said:
2:24 pm

First of all, you are a bald faced liar. I challenge you to produce any evidence in more than 3000 posts where I have ever compared anyone or any group to the holocaust. You can’t because there is nothing there. In fact, the word “Holocaust” does not appear in either article you cite which proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are a liar - and an inept and bad one at that.

ROFL. You are still in denial. The left has used this “denier” BS to shout down and intimidate opponents and reduce them to the level of disreputable crazies like David Irving.

You have used the term “denier” repeatedly. That is a fact. I would say it is fair to say that a neutral observer, if they heard the term “denier” would quickly associate that with someone like holocaust denier David Iriving. In fact proponents of AGW have even come out and proposed Nuremberg type trials for “deniers”.

Take a good read at that Moran. The comments to that little gem resemble your kind response.

What a troll. What a dishonest mountebank. I challenged you to produce evidence that I equated global warming deniers with holocaust deniers and you drop the “holocaust” part and try and make a case for me using simply “denier” instead? What kind of idiocy is that? It’s the kind of idiocy used by people who find themselves caught in a lie and try and wiggle out of it

And where my article is intelligent, reasoned, logical and on point, you insist on hysteria, exaggeration, hyperbole, and outright lies. Anyone you disagree with must be a liberal, right? Jeez - how many times have I heard that?

They may not prove natural global warming is a crock, but, they sure do not help the case of you climate alarmists who believe in AGW, Rick. The emails and the rest of the hacked data are just driving another nail in the AGW coffin. Notice that you are using the term “climate change,” which is supposed to denote how a greenhouse gas makes it cold. Pretty sad, actually.

As more and more data is released, as more and more scientists are free to actually engage in science and speak their minds, we are finding out more and more that the belief in AGW is on part with believing in Scientology.

The climate is changing. It has been changing for 20,000 years. IT will continue to change. Why do you insist on claiming otherwise?

ed.

7

Modulo Myself Said:
3:05 pm

As more and more data is released, as more and more scientists are free to actually engage in science and speak their minds, we are finding out more and more that the belief in AGW is on part with believing in Scientology.

I’ve been on the internet for ten years, and I do believe that I have read this statement (with the confidence in its inevitability only increasing) at least once per day for each of those years.

The truth is that the ’sceptic’ movement is pretty much finished. There is no science left to counter the consensus on man-made climate change. The sad attempts to debunk the hockey stick–which, incidentally, contra the reporting of reputable scientific journals such as The American Thinker is still considered accurate–never panned out. Other favorites suffered similar fates. Christy’s temperature decline was corrected to show warming. Solar cycles are a bust. Now the ’sceptics’ are down to the insertion of an El Nino in order to prove cooling for the period spanning (current year - 1998), which, in their minds, proves something.

It would be funny, if in fact people did not take this crap seriously.

Sorry, but you are about a year too late to save the hockey stick. McIntyre has destroyed it. Mann and Briffa finally had to release their data - after 10 years of resisting which no reputable scientist would ever, ever do - and even the IPCC is backing away from it.

I will repeat for those like you who are comprehension challenged; debunking the hockey stick does not debunk global warming. And anyone who makes incredibly idiotic statements like “There is no science left to counter the consensus…” shouldn’t be commenting on any post dealing with any scientific subject.

The timeline for these mini-blogstorms is always similar. An unverified accusation of malfeasance is made based on nothing, and it is instantly ‘telegraphed’ across the denial-o-sphere while being embellished along the way to apply to anything ‘hockey-stick’ shaped and any and all scientists, even those not even tangentially related. The usual suspects become hysterical with glee that finally the ‘hoax’ has been revealed and congratulations are handed out all round. After a while it is clear that no scientific edifice has collapsed and the search goes on for the ‘real’ problem which is no doubt just waiting to be found. Every so often the story pops up again because some columnist or blogger doesn’t want to, or care to, do their homework. Net effect on lay people? Confusion. Net effect on science? Zip.

I’m not a scientist. I don’t know how modeling past climates or future climate on data works. I have to operate with the ability to believe in the credibility of others. And all I can say is that, according to scientists, the victory you seem to think happened did not.

Read what I wrote. I claim no “victory.” My hope is that the debate gets back on firm scientific ground. Denying that there are still deep, complicated questions about the climate is ridiculous. Those making that claim are more interested in advancing a political agenda than a scientific one.

So is the debate over scientifically? Nope. Big political hole though.

11

anon Said:
5:22 pm

People in different countries on opposite hemispheres colluding to push an international treaty on industrial regulation is the very fu#@$#@ing definition of global conspiracy.

12

funny man Said:
6:20 pm

Science always has to weigh and integrate data from different sources. In that sense it cannot be an ‘exact’ science. Just think of meteorology, how much impact will this hurricane have on weather in Dallas, how much will the weather in Colorado impact it at the same time etc etc. You would still measure rain at different weather station, feed all this into models derived from past weather pattern and then try to make a prognosis. In spite of all, this is still a valid way of doing things but as everyone knows, the weatherman is not always right. Folks, that’s not a conspiracy.
The problem (well illustrated in some of the comments) is that some on the right and the left have ALREADY decided the outcome of climate change come what may. That’s unfortunate because it is an important topic and everyone should keep an open mind.

13

Mark_0454 Said:
7:05 pm

Let’s start with just one.

One of the first arguments of the global warming alarmists is to point out the lack of contradictory papers in peer-reviewed publications (no longer true).

These e-mails make it look like there was a concerted effort by a small incestuous group to keep papers contradictory to AGW out of publications.

A world-wide conspiracy? Probably not — more like a high school clique. But, one grabbing for millions if not billions of tax payer money.

14

Sharpshooter Said:
7:39 pm

All is “proves” is that many highly influential “scientists” are completely full of crap and their arguments are fraudulent.

15

funny man Said:
9:10 pm

Sharpshooter,
if you could scientifically show where the arguments are fraudulent it would help make your case. In lieu of facts it is just hot air.

16

Liberty60 Said:
10:30 pm

Funnyman touches on it, that to dismiss the notion that 6 Billion humans cannot possibly have an effect on the earth’s climate is partisan hackery.

Science is never as “settled” as we would like to think. Even now there are arguments over what killed the dinosaurs, whether or not they were cold or hot blooded, etc.

What we the public have to do is to make policy based on the most reasonable assumption of risk and cost, based on the competing arguments.

right now, it seems to me the cost of changing our habits while massive, is still less than the potential effects of global warming.

Do six billion ants have an effect on the climate of Texas? We have such an inflated concept of ourselves. It is not partisan to demand scientifically veriifiable proof of an allegation, which we now apparently know does not exist. We do know that many of these so-called climate experts and supporting politicians have a lot to gain by promoting this lie.

Advice: Omit needless words.
You could have in a single paragraph dispensed with the strawman that this ‘disproves global warming’. Then you could save the other paragraphs for what it does prove:

It proves that acts of disinformation, data fudging, manipulation of peer review process, political skullduggery, and a rabid fear of critics of their ’science’ was and is at work among the Hockey Stick / IPCC team scientists. Many of these acts goes beyond mere bad science to unethical and perhaps even illegal attempts to evade FOI requirements. This greatly undermines the credibility of those who claim ‘the science is settled’ and ‘you can trust the IPCC’. No it isn’t and no we can’t. The Trust is shattered.

What a troll. What a dishonest mountebank. I challenged you to produce evidence that I equated global warming deniers with holocaust deniers and you drop the “holocaust” part and try and make a case for me using simply “denier” instead?

Yes, that guy is a troll, but it is also the case that the term ‘denier’ has been used by global warming alarmists as a slur against skeptics - one of those ‘assume the conclusion’ things. And of course the climate is changing, and has - naturally - for earth’s entire history. the Global Warming Skeptic Bob Carter of Australia is familiar with paleo-climate and uses some facts from that to debunk some of the AGW theory fears.

There appear to be many leading advocates for the AGW theory involved in this email controversy. But positing a “global conspiracy” is a stretch. The reason is that the AGW scientific community is just too diverse, too spread out over too many scientific disciplines for such a conspiracy to take root.

Not quite. The “lead authors” on the IPCC are a pretty small group of folks and they are all tied in with this ‘cabal’ of climate scientists. They deliberately shunned and ignored the science they didn’t like (Lindzen of MIT, for example). One of the mistakes is to assume that because you have hundreds of folks involved in IPCC that its a perfect democracy. NOPE. Some of the emails are showing how the lead IPCC author put his own work to showcase and ignored some other work, and a reviewer was noting it, but got ignored. Skeptics have long complained of how they get shut out of the IPCC process … IT’S A CLEAR CASE OF GROUPTHINK. Lack of transparency plus hidden agendas equals opportunity for a small group to queer the outcome in the way they want.

21

Louis Wheeler Said:
12:30 am

The problem that I see with the AGW activists is that they make the consequences of Global Warming so catastrophic. This is untrue.

What is the most benign period in the 22 thousand years since the last Ice Age? It occurred 7 to 8 thousand years ago. That was when the Earth was 2.5 degrees Celsius warmer than today. The rain forests were a quarter larger than now, but that was okay because the Sahara was a grassland.

The sea levels were six feet higher than now, but farmland was far more prevalent. Upper latitudes in Europe far above Moscow was grazing land. It was a bountiful time. That is what the AGW activists are trying to scare you with. It makes no sense.

That should go to show us non believers that us sceptics have an oven waiting for us.

23

Mark_0454 Said:
7:19 am

Let’s take another one.

These e-mails cast serious doubt on the quality and credibility of the computer modeling used to show global warming. These people were actively covering up the deficiencies in these models.

Most people know models are not proof, but these people were allowed to push this anyway. The models may not be completely discredited, but no one should believe them without a thorough, independent audit.

While I agree with the general thrust here, you obviously are as divorced from the objective reality of academia as you are from actual American politics.

The pressure to conform in academia is so immense that many scientists have kept quiet or gone along with this massive fraud. When you refer to “peer reviewed” articles, you profound ignorance on that aspect of this topic oozes. The articles are “peer-pressure reviewed.” It certainly isn’t limited to the AGW hoax, but given the political ramifications, particularly the advance of crypto-socialism, the pressure is more intense.

When the first researchers had the audacity to report that heterosexual AIDS was relatively rare, they were drummed out of the academy. I now am helping work on a documentary about a distinguished medical academic who literally was ruined when he came forward with his findings.

In America, the left-wing reguarly conducts a war on science. You don’t read or hear about it until someone in Europe calls “bullshit.” While some on the Right also have conducted a war on science via creationism and so forth, it is quite rare. For the Left, it is SOP. You need to educate yourself and stop enabling.

26

funny man Said:
3:54 pm

Obamathered,
I’m a conservative scientist but have to tell you your assessment is wrong. People in general are resistant to a change in dogma but you portray it as if scientists were ‘hounded out’ That is BS. Peer reviewed is not perfect but you tell me a better way. If you can make your case you will be able to publish. Maybe not in Science or Nature but a second-tier journal. However, if you are correct people will eventually come around. Of course, if your scientific method is weak I would reject your paper too. All this talk about ‘crypto socialism’ in American science is BS. Yeah, right, that’s why they were (are) the leaders in Natural Science for the past 50 years.

27

glasnost Said:
10:25 pm

Rick,

The scenario you describe here, that you think is true, is definitely more realistic than say, Michelle Malkin’s point of view. And if this was reality, I wouldn’t find it incredible. But in fact, you’re still not quite right, or rather this story is even less true than your halfway version. Not only does this not demonstrate a global conspiracy or that global warming is false, it doesn’t even demonstrate bad scientific method on the part of so much as one scientist.

Since you’re likely to reject the source out of hand, allow me to quote:

A common exercise in any intro statistic class is to split the students into two groups, one group flips a coin 100 times and records the results, another just makes 100 entries up off the top of their heads. The teacher then comes back, looks at the two lists, and usually identifies which is which with hardly a glance. How? The trick is the teacher knows that on the real list, there will be several sequences of four or five in a row of all heads or all tails, whereas on the other list students will tend to stick with a more heads-tails-heads-tails alternating approach.

Now, everyone knew what I meant just now when I wrote trick, right? Nothing deceitful, simply the method used to get an answer to a math problem. With that in mind, let’s look at this 1999 email purporting to be evidence of fraud among some climate scientists:

“I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e., from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”

The email is one of thousands sent over a period of ten years by climate researchers and other scientists, journalists, lobbyists, and the occasional flake, stolen from a university network a few days ago. DeSmogBlog has more on the theft. Obviously, emails don’t change the observed reality of human assisted climate change in the cryosphere and elsewhere. Nevertheless, climate change denialists have combed through them looking for anything they can pull out of context and pass off as evidence of a global conspiracy. They’re getting some media mileage out of it. Even though, so far, the best they’ve been able to come up with is examples like the above.

The “Mike” is Michael Mann, “hide” means to account for (See also this comment), and the trick referred to is how to resolve a question involving two sets of data. One set is the “real” actual temperature readings, the other is by proxy, tree-rings, corals, ice cores and the like. When reconstructing the temperature record going back a thousand years or more, proxies are all you get — there were no super accurate thermometers handily placed around the globe during medieval times! But proxies only give an approximation, hence the large variance in the now familiar reconstruction graph affectionately known as the Hockey Stick represented below as shading around the blue and red lines.

But as time rolls by, and proxy data become more plentiful, the error bars (i.e. the variable shading) shrink. Eventually, thanks to the invention of modern thermometers and ships to carry them, precise temperature readings from all over the world become more widely available and increasingly reliable, and there is a relatively short interval where both the proxy reconstruction (blue) and the instrumental record (red) are used. The proxy record ends (1980), but the instrumental record continues through 1999. That was the issue being discussed in the emails: why end the plot in 1980 when there’s instrumental data through the 90s? In the original 1998 paper published in Nature, Mann et al showed the instrumental data through the 1990s to complete the plot. The emailer was following suit in his own work. That’s “Mike’s Nature trick”. It really is that simple.

Moreover, both instrumental and proxy records were clearly labeled and delineated in the original papers and many since, so there was no opportunity for any ambiguity as to what was being shown. It makes sense that “Mike” Mann would be mentioned, he has worked extensively with both kinds of data, actual and proxy, and was one of the original paleo-climatologist who developed the Hockey Stick using them. The email is just a tiny snippet of several colleagues in the midst of discussing these points and others.

How hard was it to figure this out? Anyone could have done it, assuming they wanted to. Just like any competent reporter, I asked the people involved, including Prof. Mann:

I’ve quoted almost the whole thing, because I don’t know how to cut it down while keeping its sense intact.

But this is, by far, the most logical explanation for the email gotchas. Your first quote hints at that, but this is a more complete explanation.

I don’t know much about the story in your second quote, but I’m not sold on the fact that McIntyre’s analysis really debunked anything.

There’s nothing wrong with releasing underlying data, but there are undoubtedly several ways to misinterpret such underlying data so as to convince yourself and others that the scientist is a fraud, when is in fact following something like the kind of standard error correction practice that is widely accepted in his discipline as **part of the scientific method**. Most raw data sets tell no one anything at all about anything until, as part of the experiment, they are filtered according to some kind of experimentally derived, theory-based procedure. that process is most of what we call science.

28

Dan Pangburn Said:
11:19 pm

If not a crock, AGW is at least an egregious mistake.

All of the average global temperatures for the entire 20th century and so far in the 21st century are readily and accurately determined with no consideration whatsoever needed of changes to the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide or any other greenhouse gas.

This research shows that there is no significant Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) (and therefore no human caused climate change) from added atmospheric carbon dioxide or any other added greenhouse gas.

29

N. Seaver Said:
10:36 pm

Why are we calling AGW a theory? Isn’t AGW a hypothesis?

After all, a scientific hypothesis is a proposed explanation for an observable phenomenon and the scientific method requires that one can test it.

While a scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on a body of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment. Such fact-supported theories are not “guesses” but reliable accounts of the real world.

AGW doesn’t seem to fit the definition of a scientific theory as it does not provide a well-substantiated explanation, based on a body facts that are repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment.

30

Professional scientist Said:
11:34 am

Warming and cooling are relative terms. The earth is cooling if you take early earth’s molden lava conditions as baseline. If you take the ice age as baseline, the earth is warming.

Warming occurs first and then atmospheric carbon dioxide level increases — not vise versa as the AGW model claims. That fact is the most damning to AGW claim. Increased solar activity also is related the global warming.

If carbon dioxide is the cause of AGW, carbon dioxide from earth’s SUV must of made it to Mars for Mars was warming (according to old Russian data).

31

K_McLoud Said:
1:49 pm

First off,

Rick was justified in his use of the word “Denier”, This however does not mean that all people who disagree with Al Gore are deniers. Both Deniers and Skeptics exist.

In their heart of hearts a true scientific skeptic says:
“I have yet to see sufficient evidence to reject the null hypothesis that human activity has no impact on the earth’s climate”

In their heart of hearts a Denier says:
“Human activity could never effect earths climate, no amount of evidence could convince me otherwise”

In reality, the arguments of deniers boil down to two logical fallacies:

The argument from personal incredulity, i.e.:
“Do you have any idea how big the earth is? Us little humans could never effect something that big!”

and the argument ad hominem, i.e.:
“All those intellectual academics are liberals and crypto-socialists, they just want to shove government control of the economy down our throats”

If we’re being honest with ourselves, both groups exist. Unfortunately, a fair amount of our fellow conservatives fall into the later group out of a general disdain for environmentalism and the governmental regulation that it inevitably flows from it.

Also unfortunately, we lack the superpower possessed by our liberal brethren that allows them to peer into the souls of men discern perceive their true intentions. This means that we cannot tell with certainty in which camp any particular individual lies unless they are willing to tell us.

So, after we do away with the denier mentality we are left with the obvious question of whether AGW has been sufficiently established as scientific fact to justify the social, political, and economic costs inherent in its mitigation?

It essentially comes down to a cold, unemotional, dare I say even, un-political cost-benefit analysis. This is where the legitimate scientific discussion lies. The question is: at what point do the potential benefits of reducing greenhouse gas emissions outweigh the costs of the reduction?

Here’s a quote that could shed some light on this discussion from famous biologist Stephen Jay Gould:

“In science, “fact” can only mean “confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.” I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.”

I love this…
I have said for years that the data set that was being used by environmentalists to “prove” man-made global warming was statistically insignificant.
I said that scientists were letting their politics and bias cloud their judgement and come up with conclusions that were not accurate.
I knew that they were trying to silence the actual scientists who can be objective from talking about the problems with the global warming data.
I never thought that they were simply making things up…
I guess you can never go to far down, down, down when it comes to the mind-set of a liberal.

So algore won a Nobel Peace Prize for making a movie that was full of lies even before this new batch of lies was reveled.

I just sit and think about all the liberals all over the Internet and specifically on this blog that made global warming their religion.
They bashed me and other conservatives as not being able to keep up with the times, for not believing in science.

The problem was that I did understand how research and data collection work and you guys did not.
I would really love to see all the blind-sheep liberals come on here and admit that man-made global warming is completely made up.
We need to stop destroying the economy of the world and especially the US economy for this made up religion.
It has been proven now…even more so than it was before.

First a few links:
Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of ‘Anthropogenic Global Warming’?
Junk science exposed among climate-change believers

and here you still have king moron with his head in the sand, embarrassing himself and those who follow his religion..embarrass them if that is possible…
Obama: ‘Step closer’ to climate deal…

You have to believe that these guys always knew global warming was made-up…they really couldn’t be this stupid, could they?

This has to be about destroying capitalism or taking down the big, bad dirty companies, right?
Please tell me you guys are really not this stupid?
And that you continue to be after your whole Bible has been proven made up and a lie.
Tell me you have just a little bit of dignity

What the Hadley emails prove is that the UK FOI system is broken and people ought to be fired over it. Pro-AGW scientists convinced UK FOI officers to treat requests differently based on the opinions of requesters (and I suspect blog commenters who commented on Climate Audit who were not even doing the FOI requests). That’s scandal enough.

The emails prove that the state of science is entirely rotten in the UK and perhaps in the US too. They prove that these very smart people were willing to court prison time by destroying information rather than let the science speak for itself. That’s strongly suggestive that AGW theory is a crock.

I am disappointed in the sleight of hand that the article above commits. “Global Warming” is a popular press bowdlerization. It’s shorthand for Anthropogenic (man caused) Global Warming. That’s what’s under discussion, whether AGW is a crock or not.

One of the great sins that skeptics accuse the AGW crowd of is their denial of global warming during the Medieval Warm Period and the denial of global cooling during the Little Ice Age. In fact, some of the emails deal with an effort to ‘contain’ the MWP to a Europe only event.

Nobody in the serious skeptic community denies global warming. It is the AGW crowd that is full of MWP deniers because accepting the existence of a global MWP makes a great big joke out of Mann’s sainted “hockey stick” reconstruction.

If you’re going to use the popular press term, at least don’t take it literally and use it to beat others over the head with. It’s not right and lowers the discourse for no good reason.

34

K_McLoud Said:
10:20 pm

the game-

you said:
“[the fact that AGW does not exist] has been proven now…even more so than it was before.”

It seems to me that in order to draw that conclusion from these emails, you must take one of two stances:

1) These emails show that every single shred of evidence for AGW is fraudulent.

-or-

2) The fact that any one piece of evidence for a phenomena is fraudulent can be taken as proof that the entire phenomena is non-existent, regardless of any other evidence.

Which of these stances are you taking?

(p.s. I strongly recommend you carefully read my earlier post and understand my position before you go railing against “anti-capitalist” and “false religion” straw men.)

“I have yet to see sufficient evidence to reject the null hypothesis” Is the best a scientist can ever hope to say.

Once you say “I am CERTAIN, and no amount of evidence could ever convince me otherwise” you have removed yourself from the realm of science and firmly located yourself in the realm of ideology.(Al Gore’s realm)

If you ask a good scientist about UFO’s being alien spacecraft, he will not say “I am certain UFO’s are not alien spacecraft.”

He will say “I have yet to see sufficient evidence to reject the null hypothesis that UFO’s are misidentified terrestrial phenomena”

There is a BIG difference, the former is a statement of ideology, the later is a scientific conclusion.

37

K_McLoud Said:
12:44 pm

side note-

I just read over that link of yours and FYI, that analysis is total bunk. This of course does not support the AGW case, but that analysis employs some awfully sloppy math and doesn’t “prove” anything at all.

top 2 reasons:
1) The model assumes that temperature increase is proportional to the time integral of the sun spot count. This is by definition always a positive integer.

Lets leave aside for the moment the highly suspect assumption that the temperature increase would be related to the time integral of the signal. The integral of a series of positive integers will perpetually increase and tend towards infinity over time. (since it by definition must always have a positive derivative)

What this essentially means is that the model predicts that the earth’s temperature will tend towards infinity over time. Not only is this assertion ridiculous, it violates the first two laws of thermodynamics. This flaw alone is egregious enough discredit the entire analysis.

2) He uses at least 5 constants to “fit” the model. It is important to note that these constants are not independently analytically determined, they are optimized to fit the empirical data. The author readily admits that he does this “to get a value close to the temperature anomalies.”

This means he essentially used an optimized model with 5 degrees of freedom to minimize the error between the model’s response and the empirical data. This makes the model EXTREMELY weak. Given a model with five degrees of freedom, I could likely show a stronger correlation between earth’s temperature and the average American’s credit card debt, or the win percentage of the Boston Red Socks. In other words, the model is meaningless.

Like I said at the beginning, this does not support AGW. But it does mean that you shouldn’t go touting that “study” around to anyone with any experience in mathematically modeling complex systems. And for the love of God, don’t invoke some kind of vast conspiracy to explain why that garbage doesn’t get published. My Undergrad statistics professor would have flunked me for turning in an analysis like that.

38

K_McLoud Said:
12:54 pm

another extremely underhanded thing the author of that “study” does:

he continues the model prediction 30 years into the future by assuming that in the future sun spot activity will equal zero.

“The extension of this line beyond the present assumes that future sunspot count is zero. Future temperature anomalies depend on future sunspot counts and future PDO behavior neither of which can be confidently predicted.”

So he admits his 30 years of “predictions” are worthless because they are based on entirely bogus assumptions. Then why would include 30 years of erroneous predictions on his plot? Why not just end the plot at 2009?

perhaps just an oversight? but then why write about it in the description?

perhaps he wanted to give the false impression that his model predicts future temperature decreases when it in fact predicts perpetual temperature increase?

We can’t read his mind, so we can not know for sure, but the whole thing smells fishy enough to be highly suspect.

39

Dan Pangburn Said:
10:55 pm

K_McLoud,

First, you assert that I said something that I didn’t say and then you berate me for having said it. How does that work? I continuously search for credible evidence of whether I am right or not even when I am ‘certain’. Given that, maybe I should weasel-word it a bit and say I am very nearly certain. No, I’m certain . . .

Statistical analysis was not used or needed in this work so reference to ‘null hypothesis’ is not relevant.

Apparently you did not spend enough time looking at the paper and then jumped to erroneous conclusions. You overlooked that the ‘energy out’, proportional to the fourth power of average global absolute temperature, was subtracted from the ‘energy in’ leaving the energy change which is proportional to average global temperature change. The flaw is in your failure to accurately read and understand what is written.

Perhaps the following description of the research will be easier to understand: According to the first law of thermodynamics, energy in minus energy out equals change in energy stored. The historical coincidence of low sunspot count with low temperature suggests the hypothesis that there is a connection. To get to energy and the first law, take the time-integral of sunspot count. NOAA has a site that gives a daily average sunspot count for each year so, to integrate with a time step of a year, just add the numbers for each year up to the year of interest. That would be ‘energy in’.

The rate that energy is radiated from the planet is proportional to the fourth power of the absolute temperature. Multiply this by the number of years to get to the same ‘year of interest’. The result of this is ‘energy out’ and the difference is energy change or net energy. Then multiply the energy change by a constant to make the net energy from 1700 to about 1940 have a fairly level trend. That requires a constant of 0.00000000636 which in scientific notation is written 6.36E-9.

The difference, energy in minus energy out, is the change in energy stored in the planet. The change in energy of the planet is indicated by the average global temperature. To get values close to the temperature anomalies, divide the ‘change in energy’ by 4000. Subtract a constant value of 0.4 from each of these values that you calculate to offset the data to overlay measured temperature anomalies. Graph this and you will discover a temperature run-up in the last half of the 20th century.

The planet’s temperature is dominated by the temperature of the oceans. The oceans circulate and ‘turn over’ so that sometimes warmer temperatures are at the surface and sometimes colder temperatures, so measured average surface temperatures can go up and down without any change in the overall average energy that the oceans contain. Assume an oscillating temperature trend factor due to effective ocean turnover that starts at +0.45 in 1877 and declines linearly for 32 years to zero in 1909 then increases linearly for 32 years back to +0.45 in 1941, then back down linearly again to zero in 1973, linearly up to 0.45 in 2005 and linearly down to zero again in 2037.

Now add the anomalies calculated from sunspot energy to the anomalies calculated from effective ocean oscillation and you will discover that you have done a remarkable job of tracking the measured temperatures of the entire 20th century and on into the 21st century. Alternatively, go to the October 14 pdf at http://climaterealists.com/index.php?tid=145&linkbox=true to see the resulting graph showing an overlay of the calculated and measured temperatures. The temperature decline from 1941 to 1973 was about 57% less than it would have been without the high sunspot-count time-integral during that period. The average global temperature increase from 1973 to 2005 was about 47% more than it would have been without the high sunspot-count time-integral during that period. It was not necessary to consider any contribution from CO2 or any other greenhouse gas.

There are actually 4 ‘constants’ that were discovered during the research. A fifth value is applied as a simple offset on the graph to show how accurately the calculated temperature anomalies match the measured temperature anomalies.

6.36E-9 is required to make temperatures from 1700 to about 1940 have a level trend.
The 4000 value accounts for the effective thermal capacitance to “get values close to temperature anomalies”.
The third and fourth constants that were discovered during the research account for effective ocean turnover oscillation and do not change the time-averaged (over 64 years) energy stored. The time-integral of the PDO index is very closely proportional to this effective ocean turnover oscillation.

Again, since this is a deterministic engineering analysis and not a statistical analysis, the concept of degrees-of-freedom does not apply. I have no idea whether your undergrad statistics professor would have also failed to understand this type of analysis.

As to the “extension of this line beyond the present”, the line shown beyond the present is a lower-limit trend (which is the expected trend if there are no sunspots). It assumes that the factors that have controlled the average global temperature since 1895 continue. My statement (that you quoted) stands.

I really don’t know why apparently no one considered the time-integral of sunspots before. Sunspot count or a time factor have been considered with poor correlation. Perhaps the scientists that did that work were not as familiar with the first law of thermodynamics as Mechanical Engineers are. If they knew what the second law is they would know that it is not a pertinent factor in this discussion.

As this research shows, increased greenhouse gasses have no significant effect on average global temperature. The quiet sun is allowing the planet to cool. The good news is that because of the huge thermal capacitance of the oceans (the top 3.5 meters of the oceans is equivalent in thermal capacitance to the entire atmosphere) the planet will cool slowly. But we may eventually face crop failure and famine from shortened growing season.

There is ample evidence that climate has changed …at least in the 3,800 or so years since Prophet Moses, was taken to the Mountain. You see, as the written record shows, he saw lush green valleys, all the way to Yarushalem, modern day Jerusalem. Just outside in the valley is the ‘Oak of Mamre’ where Sarah was purported to be buried…and is, virtual desert now. Where has all the greenery gone (no political commentary here!)..? But ‘climate change’. SO, do we believe the ‘watermelon’ party…green on outside , but, RED on inside. Most of this is just another power grab by people wanting to suppress, tax, lord over, and stick it to the others.

41

K_McLoud Said:
7:06 pm

Dan Pangburn,

Firstly, the term “null hypothesis” is commonly used in science outside of statistics to refer to the fact that one’s base assumption must be that nothing extraordinary is occurring. Its a similar concept to Occam’s razor, or Carl Sagan’s “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” mantra. Secondly, if we wanted to pick nits, I think a rather strong argument could be made that all observational and experimental science is rooted in statistics… but I digress…

I did miss that he considered radiative heat loss, though the lack of an independently determined emissivity coefficient invalidates the fact that the energy balance results in the correct temperature. In other words, you can’t choose the emissivity so that the temperatures agree with the empirical data and then argue that the model is valid because of that agreement.

The term “degrees of freedom” is commonly used in the systems modeling literature to refer to the number of parameters the optimization algorithm is allowed to vary in order to minimize the cost function. “Orthogonal dimension in the optimization parameter space” is also appropriate, but it just doesn’t role off the tongue as nicely as DOF.

Which leads us to the real problem with the model now that the infinitely increasing temperature has been dealt with. We can nit pick on the exact number, but in creating this model, the author selected somewhere between 4 and 6 separate parameters specifically so that the model would resemble the empirical data. It is therefore entirely unremarkable that model resembles said empirical data. This is extremely important because the claim boils down to: “the model matches the data, therefore AGW is bunk”.

Like I said before, give me any historical data set (poll results, sports stats, price of tea in china, etc…) the ability to fool around with integrals and derivatives, and 4 or 5 free parameters, and I could produce a correlation at least as convincing as the one presented in this article. Would that “Disprove” AGW?

In order to make an argument like that for a model, the parameters need to be arrived at independently of the data set you are trying to match. You can’t cheat by looking at the answer key to come up with your own answer. For example, instead of choosing the emissivity so the the temps turned out right, you would need to arrive at the emissivity either via some measurement, or through some independent calculation such as doing a weighted average of the emissivities of the various gasses in the atmosphere.

Don’t get me wrong, we optimize model parameters in order to match model outputs with empirical data all the time. But we do this in order to extract system parameters such as pole-zero locations, nonlinear phase plots, damping ratios, etc… We would never optimize a model to fit the empirical evidence, and then use that fit as evidence for some argument. Of course it fits, you rigged the game ahead of time so that it practically HAD to turn out that way.

All that being said, I have a problem with the basic logic behind the argument. Given that there are two plausible causes that are not mutually exclusive, can the fact that a model can be derived to explain the response with only one cause be used to “prove” that the other cause has had no effect? I don’t think so.

To give an example, lets say you and I were both pushing on a giant rock. Observations show that the net force on the rock is 100 N. We cold easily derive a model where you have no effect on the rock (I push with 100 N, you push with 0 N). But that doesn’t “prove” you weren’t pushing on the rock. Its just as likely that I wasn’t pushing at all, or that we were both pushing with 50N each, or any of the other infinite number of possible combinations.

What I’m saying is that since sun spots and infrared absorption are both plausible climate forcing mechanisms, and they aren’t mutually exclusive, then showing that a model can explain the data without invoking one of those two causes doesn’t disprove the effect of the other.

42

Dan Pangburn Said:
4:11 pm

K_McLoud,
It is becoming apparent why tens of billions of dollars have been spent in futile efforts to prove that added CO2 caused Global Warming while an unpaid engineer with a desk-top computer and using simple engineering analysis has discovered the real cause of the temperature run-up in the 20th century. With this discovery, changes to ghg levels have been found to have no significant effect on climate and Natural Climate Change has been verified. This does not show that added ghgs have zero effect. It does show that the temperature anomalies can be accurately calculated by ignoring any effect from changes to the level of ghgs.

The validity of any model depends on its predictive ability. The AOGCMs that the IPCC uses have been ‘trained’ relentlessly to fit more than a century of data (how many dof were used to do that ‘training’?). They have failed miserably to predict anything since about 2001. All of the unknowns in the ‘model’ presented in the October 14 pdf at http://climaterealists.com/index.php?tid=145&linkbox=true could be determined using data prior to about 1975. This model gives an excellent prediction of temperatures after then.

However, just because this model does a phenomenal job of ‘predicting’ average global temperatures since 1895 does not mean that it will continue to do so forever. The ‘effective ocean turnover’, although overwhelmingly dominated by the (time-integral of the) PDO index, is actually the net effect of multiple ocean turnovers that happened to coincide in a way that resulted in the observed pattern for the 20th century and so far in the 21st century. Perhaps these individual ocean turnovers can be sorted out and time constants determined so that the net ocean turnover can be projected into the future. If the sunspot count can also be predicted than this model can be used to predict future average global temperature. Lacking any of this, the projection shown on the graph remains the best estimate of the lower limit to the future temperature trend. If the quiet sun continues, the trend of actual measurements of average global temperature should be close to that lower limit.

Your analogy of the rock is an interesting one. I can think of two issues with it: 1) Our rock moves i.e. the average global temperature changes and 2) the assumption must be that each of the ’causes’ contributes a part of the ‘force’. The alternative is the illogical assumption that one or both of the ’causes’ is sharply nonlinear. Since one of the ‘forces’ accounts for all of the change the other ‘force’ must be insignificant.

43

K_McLoud Said:
9:39 pm

First off, pointing out that the models used by climate scientists have been optimized to fit the data is a red herring. They are not saying “we’re right because our model fits the data”, The purpose of their model is prediction. Whereas your entire argument essentially boils down to “We’re right because our model fits the data.” Its a HUGE difference.

But more importantly, I am quite convinced that there is a fatal flaw in your logic.

If you have two plausible causes, not mutually exclusive, then showing that the system’s response can be explained using only one of the causes does not “prove” that the other cause did not significantly contribute to the system’s response. This is especially the case when your model has been fitted to the data, making it entirely unremarkable that such a correlation occurs.

My “two guys pushing on a rock” analogy holds. I pictured the rock as moving, the observation was its acceleration (though I don’t see how this is relevant). I also never assumed that “each of the causes contributes a part of the force”, in fact, the example possible model I gave was:

“We cold easily derive a model where you have no effect on the rock (I push with 100 N, you push with 0 N)”

My rock example is really just a way to illustrate my point. The real problem here is that the core of your argument is logically fallacious. Even if I stipulated for the sake of argument, that the model was flawless, it would still not “disprove” or even cast doubt on AGW.

If you wanted to accomplish this goal (and if we’re being honest, your goal should be to find the truth, not to disprove AGW,… but anyways…), you would need to show a similarly strong correlation between the empirical data and a model whose parameters were established completely independent of that data.

44

Dan Pangburn Said:
7:09 am

The purpose of ALL models is to predict. Some do a better job of it than others.

Since 2000 the atmospheric carbon dioxide level has increased 18.8% of the increase from 1800 to 2000. According to the average of the five reporting agencies, the average global temperature has not changed much for several years and during the seven years from 2002 through 2008 the trend shows a DECREASE of 1.8°C/century. This SEPARATION between the increasing carbon dioxide level and not-increasing average global temperature is outside of the ‘limits’ of all of the predictions of the IPCC and ‘consensus’ of Climate Scientists. The separation has been increasing at an average rate of about 2% per year since 2000. It corroborates the lack of connection between atmospheric carbon dioxide increase and average global temperature.

As the atmospheric carbon dioxide level continues to increase and the average global temperature doesn’t it is becoming more and more apparent that the IPCC and many Climate Scientists have made an egregious mistake and a whole lot of people have been misled.

Without human caused global warming there is no human-caused climate change. Any activity to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide to reduce climate change is a mistake that takes away freedom and prosperity

45

K_McLoud Said:
9:04 am

you’re changing the subject, its another red herring.

the core of your argument is:

“I’m right because my model fits the data”

This is however a fallacious argument, the way you derived the model it would have been remarkable if you DIDN’T get a fit.

Like I have said before,Using your methods, I could show an equally convincing correlation between global temps and the price of pork belly futures, it obviously wouldn’t disprove AGW.

This is an entirely different argument than the climate scientists are making. They have established a phenomena based physics, specifically, emission-absorption spectra. They are then developing models to try and estimate the effect that phenomena will have in the future. They are not saying “we’re right because our model fits the last 100 yrs of data”. which is exactly what you are saying.

Now, I’m not convinced that AGW is real, and I’m certainly not convinced that if it is the consequences would be as bad as some say. But I base my opinions on the science, science can not be judged to be right or wrong based on the effects it has on our political stances.

while we were going back and forth over the math, you thought that an appropriate point would be:

“climate change is a mistake that takes away freedom and prosperity”

Science is not right or wrong based on whether or not the policies resulting from that science would be desirable. Vaccines are undesirable from a political standpoint, they cost taxpayer money and the government must take away peoples freedoms in order to coerce people into getting vaccinated. This is unfortunate, but it does not make the entire field of immunology wrong.

So, are you judging this based on the science? or based on the effect that science would have on your political stances?

if the former is true, then why even bother throwing out that last bit about freedom when you knew it was irrelevant to the discussion?

46

Dan Pangburn Said:
2:09 pm

The discoveries that the time-integral of sunspot counts correlates with the energy increase of the planet and that added ghgs have had no significant effect on average global temperature are based primarily on engineering fundamentals using data available from scientists. The continued predictive ability of the model will continue to prove that it is valid while the failure of the IPCC’s GCMs to predict for years now shows that they have been misleading.

At worst, the discovery shows what to look for when trying to predict average global temperature and shows that the IPCC have been looking at the wrong thing.

The threat to freedom and prosperity specifically referred to misguided actions that some politicians were advocating (Cap and Trade) based on the misinformation. With climategate that threat has been substantially reduced.

Without the threat to freedom and prosperity the discoveries matter little except as an early warning to the coming cold.